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Max Horkheimer And Theodor Adorno's Culture Industry

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PARAPHRASING ASSIGNMENT INTRODCTION Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno introduced the culture industry in 1944 at the Frankfurt school (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944:31). When we compare ourselves with people who are oppressed, whilst we have democracy, we than turn to think that we are better, and this kind of thinking is the driving force behind culture industry. The culture industry is the normalisation and the wrong isolation of items in our society, and the manner in which those items are measured. People have been normalised as companies tends to produce items which are seemingly what we crave for. In this case companies are responsible in the creation of our desires. We can no longer separate what is really happening from what we see in movies (Adorno and Horkheimer 1944:35). Covered in the this assignment is the explanation of …show more content…

Alienation from the product is where people are engaged in a lot of mass production but in a capitalist system the labourer is assigned a very specific or specialised task. Unlike in the culture industry where people own the product, in alienation they work to make a product they don’t own for the people to consume and make the maximum amount of profit. The 2 | P a g e idea in culture industry is to create products for people to consume and not for them to make maximum profits. And again in alienation the capitalist collects all the profits and doesn’t really care about the product (Bronner 2011:40). According to Marx reification is used to explain a kind of awareness in the society in which people’s relation to one another is identified with the possessions one possess. A product in reification is a magical thing as men’s labour is seen in the type of products they have. The products of labour becomes the products (Bronner 2011). In culture industry the culture is uniform, and the products are produced to be the

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Colin Turner Mrs. Pitts CP English 9 13 March 2023 Outline Thesis Statement: James Dahsner is known for his creative mind and thoughts which led him to creating The Maze Runner book and series and overcoming controversy winning many awards and being very successful over the past decade. James Dahsner is known for his creative mind and thoughts. A.He had always loved writing. B.Dahsners environment growing up inspired him as well as books and movies. Dashner's most famous work was The Maze Runner book and series.

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Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception,” conclude that mass culture in the United States is identical and unoriginal “under monopoly capitalism” (Adorno, Horkheimer 1242). The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowski siblings, is about a group of enlightened outsiders who wage a war against the machines in control of human beings, who are subdued and experiencing a false reality through a simulation called the Matrix. In this paper, I will describe how the film, while seemingly original in its concept of questioning reality and rejecting conformity, ultimately succumbs to the cliches and stylizations of mass culture/media, failing to break from the formula Adorno and Horkheimer criticize. One of the most important points Adorno

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Karl Marx defines “alienation” by which laborers are estranged from their self-being because of the capitalists. A result from the lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being are controlled or exploited (en.oxforddictionaries.com). Marx asserts that capitalism is the root cause

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This alienation arises in part because of the antagonisms, which inevitable arise from the class structure of society. We are alienated from those who exploit our labor and control the things we produce.” (Marx). Karl Marx explains in his Theory of Alienation that isolation of an individual is the result of living in a society stratified by social classes. According to Marx, there are four types of alienation; alienation of the worker from their product, alienation of the worker from the act of production, alienation of the worker from their Gattungswesen (species-essence), and alienation from other workers.

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The main concept of alienated labor was developed by Karl Marx in his early work Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844 - First Manuscript [Estranged Labor]. As defined, the concept of alienation is profoundly embedded in religions and social and political theories, the possibility that some time in the past individuals feeling like foreigners in the world, however, sooner or later this distance would be overcome and humankind would again harmony with itself and Nature (Encyclopedia of Marxism). Formed from Private Property, the political economy that is Capitalism divided society into two classes¬ - Property owners and Property-Less workers. By exploitation and estrangement, these classes become further designated as masters

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Theodor Adorno 's "Culture Industry" gave false perceptions to the masses about psychological needs that could only be met by capitalism. These needs get in the way of people 's true needs and it ends up distracting everyone from what 's really important. People start using media to escape their lives and problems. In the Trekkies documentary there was a man who said he was always the one following orders and never put himself out there. He

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Despite both being from the same school of thought, the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno found themselves debating the value of art in a world on the brink of war. The basis of Benjamin’s and Adorno’s argument was not a critique of the art itself, but rather ever-growing trend of the reproduction of art. For Benjamin, as described in, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, the reproduction of art and the novelty of film, which stemmed from technological marvels, was a natural progression and a detractor to the growing fascist presence. However, for Adorno, as discussed in “The Fetish Character of Music and the Regression in Listening”, the simplification of art, specifically music, to a mass producible

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Alienation involves individuals’ feelings of separation or estrangement from a social structure or social institution (Johnson 1996; Seeman 1959)—it involves the feelings that interactions with the social structure or social institution in question will be unpleasant and unfavorable (Krishnan, Bhatnagar and Manchanda 2009). (1989a:9) George Ritzer , by generalizing five characteristics of McJobs, he theologized the consequence for the laborers alienated not only by their own workplace, but also from the entire society. From the article, “ New Technologies and Alienation: Social Critical Reflections” by Douglas Kellner clearly and distinctly illustrates the idea how Mcdonaldized works bring people to isolation. (Kellner

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Mass Culture and Style in The Matrix Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in “The Culture Industry as Mass Deception,” conclude that mass culture in the United States is identical and unoriginal “under monopoly capitalism” (Adorno, Horkheimer 1242). The Matrix (1999), directed by the Wachowski siblings, is about a group of enlightened outsiders who wage a war against the machines in control of human beings, who are subdued and experiencing a false reality through a simulation called the Matrix. In this paper, I will describe how the film, while seemingly original in its concept of questioning reality and rejecting conformity, ultimately succumbs to the cliches and stylizations of mass culture/media, failing to break from the formula Adorno and

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Capitalism is understood to be the “economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” In modern society, capitalism has become the dominant economic system and has become so integrated that it has resulted in a change in the relationships individuals have with other members of society and the materials within society. As a society, we have become alienated from other members of society and the materials that have become necessary to regulate ourselves within it, often materials that we ourselves, play a role in producing. Capitalism has resulted in a re-organization of societies, a more specialized and highly segmented division of labour one which maintains the status quo in society by alienating the individual. Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim theorize on how power is embodied within society and how it affects the individuals of society.

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The culture industry thesis defined both the production of cultural products and homogenized subjectivities. Mass culture for the Frankfurt School shaped faiths, dreams, needs, doubts, and fears. It also describes an unending need for consumer products. The culture industry produced cultural consumers who would consume its products and conform to the dictates and the behaviors of the existing society. Nevertheless, as Walter Benjamin pointed out; the culture industry also produces rational and critical consumers able to dissect and discriminate among cultural texts and performances.

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Whilst in exile in the USA key theorists Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno developed an account of the “culture industry” calling attention to how industrialized and commercialized culture had become under capitalist relations of production. This observation was most evident through the overwhelmingly low level of state support for film and television industries. Mass culture was highly commercialised which was a key facture in determining a capitalist society. This became a focus of critical cultural

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Adorno and Horkheimer declare that society industry destroys self-ruling deduction and feedback, serving to safeguard the ruling request. It gives simple stimulation which occupies massed from the wrongs and disorder of the decision request. They contend that society industry has assumed control reality as the crystal through which individuals experience reality, in this way totally forming and molding their experience of life. Also society industry serves to keep specialists occupied, as communicated by the acclaimed quote from "Argument of Enlightenment": "Entertainment has turned into an expansion of work under late free enterprise". Mainstream culture seems, by all accounts, to be putting forth a shelter and diversion for work, yet truth be told it causes the specialist to further stay into an universe of items and consumerism.

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Karl Marx and Max Weber both agreed that capitalism generates alienation in modern societies, but the cause for it were both different. For Marx it is due to economic inequality in where the capitalist thinks that the workers worth nothing more than a source of labour, that can be employed and dismissed at will. This causes the workers to be dehumanised by their jobs (in the past, routine factory work and in the present-day, managing demands on a computer), which leads to the workers finding slight satisfaction and feeling incapable of improving their situation. It was noted by Marx four methods on how capitalism alienates workers. The first, is alienation from the function of working.

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